Monobank, Ukraine’s first digital-only bank, has revealed plans to launch a new digital banking app in the UK in 2019.

Fuelled by the growth on home soil, three of the company’s co-founders - Dima Dubilet, Misha Rogalskiy and Oleg Gorokhovskyi - announced plans to go cross-border.

Launched in November 2017 and on track to reach profitability next year, according to a statement from the FinTech, Monobank has recruited around 600,000 customers and amassed a loan portfolio of £70 million.

The business has used the fact it has no physical branches to offer interest rates 10 to 15 per cent lower than the competition, for a longer grace period. It used machine learning to more accurately determine creditworthiness, achieving a non-performing loan rate of less than two per cent.

“We invest heavily in AI and employ the best engineers because the better the technology is, the more affordable the loan will be for our customer,” Rogalskiy said.

Alongside the lending product, Monobank has released features designed to make mobile banking as easy and engaging as any social media or sharing economy app: ‘Shake to Pay’ only requires a mobile phone number to make a payment to any other Ukrainian bank, while a cash back loyalty program has paid out more than 100 million hryvnias, or £3 million.

The 'Sports Deposit' savings account sees the interest rate fall from 21 to 11 per cent if the customer fails to complete 10,000 steps a day.

Navigating challenges in currency regulation in Ukraine, Monobank has also introduced free foreign currency deposits and virtual currency cards for euro and US dollar payments and exchange.

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